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I have been to little pockets and it is on my bucket list to explore in the future. I have been fortunate enough to have met some wonderful friends that live there.

If you don’t know by now. I have a strong interest in art, music, politics and social issues. They are my passions.

I was asked to write about issues facing First Nations people by the owner of The Australian Independent Media Network. I was honoured, after all, I am an artist first and foremost.

I took up the challenge and have found it to be a very cathartic endeavour. Thank you Michael.

My focus with this article is on the upcoming bi-election in WA. Of particular interest to me is the seat of Canning.

If this seat is lost, we can all kiss Tony Abbott’s backside goodbye. How fantastic that would be.

Colin Barnett is the current premier of WA. I haven’t liked what I have seen him do, or Tony for that matter.

If I lived in Canning, I would be asking myself, what has the Liberal party done, that has been of benefit not only to my part of the world but for Australia as a whole?

I couldn’t come up with anything.

I can tell you what they have done that has negatively impacted on my world and my ability to create art.

Without peace of mind, the creativity will not flow.

Colin Barnett and the Abbott government has aided every Australian and foreign owned company to destroy the land and ancestral homes of people in every state of Australia without so much a blink of the eye.

This has forced many people to become homeless.

Gina Reinhart and ‘Twiggy’ Forrester have had a part in that, along with many others.

The WA government has tried to move homeless people from sleeping on the street by hosing them down during winter to move them on.

A callous and cruel act, one that I can not forget.

Barnett has colluded with Tony Abbott to set up the Recognise campaign. This project is sponsored by mining companies. Its aim is to stamp the approval for 4 new uranium mines, 2 new coal mines, 40,000 gas fracking wells and development of oil refineries in WA.

Many more are underway, completed and proposed all over Australia.

The Labour party are in on it too, they support Nuclear energy. Uranium is needed to do this.

The SA Labour premier Jay Weatherill wants to turn South Australia into a nuclear waste dump. I wouldn’t vote for them either, (now I know why the Greens were locked out of the referendum into the development of the Recognise campaign.)

These plans to continue destroying our earth and Australia have to stop. We have the generations of our children and our grandchildren in our hands.

It is our responsibility to choose wisely, when we vote.

The Liberal party has taken no action on climate change.Tony Abbott openly denied it existed. His ministers have insulted First Nations people and our International neighbours recently regarding this. I find this disgusting.

It is only a matter of time before International criminal proceedings begin and our current government are held accountable.

This sounds familiar, the political parties have treated First Nations people this way since the dawn of time. The behaviour is not new. It is time that changed.

Australia’s civil liberties have been stripped since this government came to power, with meta-data retention laws passed and the right to protest now under threat of being locked up by police.

They introduced new citizenship laws and introduced the Border Force Act.

They have tried to change that many acts in parliament, I have lost count, all designed to oppress the nation.

They have encouraged racism to flourish, with one of their ministers attending far-right winged rallies.

They then invented the war on terror.

All to promote fear amongst communities, with the intention of sending Australia to war.

It has worked.

They have increased our deficit, the economy is suffering. I read an article that we have a one in three chance of having a recession. It was from a reliable source. That scares me more than the chances of a terrorist attack on our soil.

Our unemployment rate and homeless rate is rising fast. With the introduction of 457 working visas and the China Free Trade agreement on the table, this will only get worse.

The healthy welfare card has been rolled out in a few places with the plan to have it all over Australia.

This is a gross invasion of privacy.

Whenever you use it, people will be able to know your personal situation.

I am sick of seeing the unemployed treated like second-class citizens.This helps others to label people as dole bludgers. Again, we have ‘Twiggy’ Forrester to thank for implementing this one.

The people that come up with these ideas and policies just don’t live in the real world.

They are determined to have the TPP passed through parliament without transparency. The United States reporting that the TPP, will increase the cost of medicines. It will only benefit the large pharmaceutical companies.

They have tried to pull apart medicare and eradicate bulk-billing. The only people this will affect is the poor.

The plan to de-regulate universities once again not affecting the wealthy.

It is a collective responsibility of the Nation as a whole to look out for the vulnerable people in our country.

They have done nothing about taxation reform, with the lower income stream having higher tax rates than the billionaires.

They have cut funding to the support for the elderly, mental health services, domestic violence organisations and first nations support services to name a few, yet increased the budget to defence.

Apparently the bad guys are really after us. Imagine how much more they will be, now that we
have delared war on them. Why wave a red flag in front of a bull? I have written about that one too.

The discrimination shown towards same sex marraige, I mean really. Are we living in the dark ages? How many other countries have now legalised this beautiful, joyful celebration? I can not support a party that plays politics with peoples’ lives.

Tony Abbott’s broken promises have now become the laughing stock of the nation. I mean how can you believe a word that he or anyone else in his party says?

They have failed to pass just about everything in parliament and they have all failed at their jobs. As the host of Big Brother would say “It is time to go……The Liberal Party.”

If an adult struck your 4 year old daughter with such force that she fell over and grazed her elbows, would you react?

If friends of yours were bashed to death or died from an infection due to lack of inappropriate medical treatment, would you expect an investigation to find out the cause to prevent it from happening again? Would you also expect that the murderers faced prosecution?

If you adorable little toddler, god love him, had tuberculosis, would you want diagnostic tests carried out immediately or would you prefer to wait for 3 months? Once diagnosed would you like to wait 3 weeks for the medication to arrive in your country before treatment could be carried out?

If your family had to flee their homes because of flooding due to rising sea levels from climate change, would you expect sympathy and a new home to live in or would you want to be imprisoned?

If you were sudying your HSC in a foreign land, and due to be married to a national of that country, would you want to finish your education, get married and start a family or would you prefer to be dragged by your hair screaming and placed in a detention centre? Would you expect to have representation by a solicitor or would you prefer that that right was refused?

Just for fun, do you like to play the game of waterboarding and zipping on a Sunday? I could help cable tie your arms to a bed and my friends and I could throw you up into the air and let the bed land. Promise we won’t hurt you. After that we could try a few rounds of waterboarding.

If there were government departments responsible, that could fix all of the things by closing these facilities, would you have expectations that the government minister responsible would act immediately, or would you expect that person to lie and cover up these human rights abuses?

On a different note, do you like to save money? Are you good with a budget?

By Vanessa KairiesEarlier on in the year I was analysing a summary of the Budget.Of significant interest to me, was the tens of billions allocated to defence, including setting up a new military base in Afghanistan.I thought this was very odd at the time. I had many a conversation with folks trying to find out why. If we had pulled our troops out of Afghanistan, why were we spending billions to develop a new one? At this stage there was no talk of bombing Syria.Some in the media thought it odd too.Rosie Batty had been named Australian of the Year and the funding for domestic violence sat at around 3 or 4 million for an education program to be established. Compare the two amounts. Hello, Minister for Women. Big fail. Tony was heavily criticised in the press for this.Shortly after the media reports disapproving of these figures, the government changed their website and the information regarding the costing for defence disappeared.Flash forward to now.Tony made yet another captain’s call to bomb Syria. He didn’t hesitate. Discussions about this happened before any of the politicians decided to grow a conscience and take in refugees.

Tony was in an awful hurry to send Australia to war. Airstrikes to start off with, but you can bet your bottom dollar a ground war will follow.

‘Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild.’

‘In a rational world, the involvement of Rothschild and Murdoch in this international criminal activity would show them not to be fit and proper persons to hold major commercial interests elsewhere, and action would be taken. Naturally, nothing of the kind will happen.’

‘For Israel to seek to exploit mineral reserves in the occupied Golan Heights is plainly illegal in international law.’

. . . now taking advantage of the chaos in Syria to look for precious resources to extract from the occupied Golan Heights. Israel relies heavily on imports to meet its energy consumption, and with frequent vicissitudes with its neighbors, its need for energy resources continues to shape the nature of its occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as the Golan Heights.

With the Syrian government in disarray, Israeli authorities gave the go-ahead to Afek, a subsidiary of Genie Oil and Gas, to conduct drilling in 10 wells in the occupied Golan Heights in their search for fossil fuels.’

‘Genie Oil and Gas has some high profile investors and advisors: Media baron Rupert Murdoch, former US Vice President Dick Cheney, American hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt and British investment banker Jacob Rothschild are all members of the company’s “Strategic Advisory Board.”

After reading all of this I am now questioning the motivation behind the air strikes on Syria. History has shown that many a war has been started to control the oilfields. This time, perhaps it is for oil and gas. Why now? After all, the crisis in Syria has been going on for 4 years.

Why all of a sudden has the Liberal Party done an about face on taking in refugees?

If there is going to be collateral damage, we better offset it with a token gesture of giving the lucky 12,000 Christians a new home. Interviewed, handpicked and forensically examined to see if they have any scarey baddie genes.

That and there are now votes in it. Public opinion has changed. It is amazing what one image can achieve.

The proposed intake of 12,000 Syrian refugees is a pitiful effort. Ironic too, considering the human rights abuses of those incarcerated in asylum seeker camps offshore are covered up, in secrecy, by our very own government.

If Abbott and Co are truly sympathetic, they would close down the Nauru and Manus Island detention centres too.

I have photographs of deceased children washed up on beaches from Syria, Palestine, Sudan and Libya. All were fleeing persecution and war. They may or may not be Christians, but are the same nationalities as some of those in prison offshore.

The UN has said that every person imprisoned on Nauru and Manus Island are genuine refugees.

A bit more about the series: My mother at one stage was a textile designer and I used to sit as a youngster and watch her use this medium. It is my favourite medium to work with. This series all sold before I could exhibit them. It is hard to explain what it’s about but here I go. You have to remember I am an artist and see things through different eyes.

The series ‘Spirit’ represents my humanity and the personal growth I have experienced over my life.

A bit more about the series: My mother at one stage was a textile designer and I used to sit as a youngster and watch her use this medium. It is my favourite medium to work with. This series all sold before I could exhibit them. It is hard to explain what it’s about but here I go. You have to remember I am an artist and see things through different eyes.

The series ‘Spirit’ represents my humanity and the personal growth I have experienced over my life.

It was great to see so many people at the Light the Dark events. Thank you very much to the organisers. I hope there will be plenty more. Let us not forget the poor people locked up on Manus Island and Nauru. I now feel for the refugees that aren’t Syrian. Our PM’s stance is only going to cause discrimination between the nationality of asylum seekers.
The overall intake must be lifted a great deal to show genuine support. I think the Manus Island and Nauru situation needs to be sorted out A.S.A.P.
Take the contract off that Transfield mob. Put the millions of dollars into resettling the refugees locked up instead. I Guess to do that, they would have to admit they were wrong. Something that this current government are incapable of doing. There is a great deal of irony in the words sprouting from their mouths. I also wonder what has happened to the Iranian woman called Nazanin that was raped in detention and nearly died of kidney failure. Let us not forget her. She was airlifted to Australia. Those responsible have not been charged. I guess Dutton and Abbott wouldn’t want her to talk to the media. Does this mean because of the quotas and because she is not Syrian that she will be deported? probably. I hope someone finds her, if she is still alive.